works of wanderlust

Tag: purpose

  • derailed

    I’ve been tiptoeing around the realities of my recent detour into part time work partly because I was trying to keep myself sane and partly because I was trying to avoid offending anyone there who may have stumbled upon this blog.

    No one ever did, of course.

    But as I’ve written a couple times now, I recently quit that job. I quit so recently, in fact, that I’m technically still just “between shifts” as far as my regular schedule there went. It hasn’t sunk in. It hasn’t had time to sink in. I still reflexively checked the app this morning to make sure I wasn’t missing something… you know, before that first coffee kicked in.

    But I’ve been sitting here thinking about the whole thing and feeling a lot of regret. I’ve been sitting here thinking how agreeing to go back for a second round was a big mistake.

    It wasn’t the people. First off, let me put that down.

    But here’s the backstory: Last August I decided I wasn’t quite ready to go back and get a real job, or at least I was still romanticizing the notion of a larger scale shift in my career, so I was dabbling. I thought maybe I’ll dabble in the retail grocery industry and see where it takes me for a bit. I promptly found myself working for a local small business that was expanding in our community and (insert complex business mumbo jumbo here) I got a part time gig helping build that out, launch it, and work in it. I mean that literally. I literally helped assemble shelves, frantically help customers on opening day, and then physically stumbled through the chaotic warehouse for the first two months of operation. A lot of bullshit decisions got made by people (and I can say that without flinching because when I did go back the new management literally apologized for the conditions under which I ultimately left in December). I walked away the first time, which was a bummer because I had left the little pipe dream behind but also because it was supposed to keep me busy for the cold, cold winter months. I could write for pages and pages about that time (and I have in personal documents) but I simply need to tell you that was the first time I quit.

    I did keep busy, tho, for that cold, cold winter.

    There are days and days of cold when you don’t even want to leave the house. You just crank the space heater and wrap up in slippers and a blanket and forget that anything outside exists.

    I started work on a video game.

    I made serious progress on my novel.

    And, more importantly, I went back to school. I signed up for a serious continuing education course program that consisted of seven modules of Business Analyst Certification training involving course work and post-lecture assignments.

    And I was doing great.

    There is a whole elaborate string of coincidences and conversations that led me back to the grocery store. Promises. Idealized futures. Criss-crossed expectations, mostly.

    And so for two and a half months I put an apron back on, resumed making myself available for shift work, and there I was back working. And for the first month (singular) of that back to work time it was great. They had some programs I was supporting. They had big goals for how they, as the third set of management in six months, were going to clean up the store and put it back on the rails. Whatever had happened in those months since we first walked in the building to build the shelves, something had derailed it to near crashing. I was helping, not just literally, but actually making a measurable difference to the success of the store. I had purpose.

    So I was back. And it was fine. It was fine. Really. Fine. Until it wasn’t.

    Because going back, simply, sadly, frankly, it derailed me.

    I’ve been tiptoeing around this. I’ve been writing about my struggles with multitasking and my thoughts on working towards bigger goals, and sure… all of that is true. But the reality of it is that taking on this stupid little low-paying part time job, as much as it was good for my social health and my getting out of the house motivation, it derailed everything that was important to me.

    Derailed me hard.

    My game development efforts waned.

    My writing, save for my reflective blogging, ground to nearly a halt.

    My school work measurably suffered as I rushed assignments and squeezed them into the spaces between even just those handful of infrequent shifts.

    I arguably gave it too much. I arguably didn’t compartmentalize. I arguably stumbled over my own metaphorical shoelaces and let it trip me up and throw me off. But it all of those things are true and more, too.

    The whole experience made me feel lesser. Despondently so. I was seriously becoming borderline depressed at the inertia that this stupid little job was consuming in my life. I would go to a shift, and with each shift it seemed like I had less purpose in the store, futzing around trying to fill my block of paid time with useful tasks that were become increasingly rare as they shuttered programs and made alternate plans to the handshake deals they had blue-skied when I first started, and all while getting yet another day further from the things where I was making real actual progress in my life: professional development, tangible skills, and measurable outputs towards nearing-completed projects. I was selling not just my time, but selling it to the lowest bidder and throwing in my heart and soul all tangled in the mess of it.

    At least if I’d donated it I’d have felt good about that part. But selling something for less than it’s worth?! Come on!

    The trade off was so imbalanced I can’t even clearly articulate how much it derailed everything that I loved for the uneven trade of time and loyalty and value I was giving to this stupid little store.

    You should shop there. I’m not going to name it, but if you know me you know what it’s called. It is a great little local market filled with cool people and almost certainly being run a thousand times better than when I quit the first time. But it was a terrible fit for me. It hurt me. Every bit of momentum I had gathered before that seemed suddenly at risk and arguably been derailed by my hubris in thinking I could go back and work there again without giving too much of myself. And I haven’t wanted to admit that. But it’s true, and unfortunate.

    It’s been barely thirty six hours since I last walked out of that place and I’m never going back to work there. There is no third act. But I may wander down there with a laptop and get some real work done, work meant for me and work that has purpose for who I need to be, as I get myself back on track.

  • undeleted

    To be fair, I didn’t actually read the article.

    In these days of click-bait headlines it is equally likely that any given bit of tripe posted in traditional media is some too-clever journalist writing a bit of sarcastic parody humor prefixed by an all-too-clever title to draw in the crowds who are almost certainly looking for some bit of legitimate-seeming news to validate their screwball wacky viewpoints. The author then typically tries to write some clever well-actuallies… but then who actuallies need the article when most of us never read past the headline anyhow?

    So I didn’t read it. Couldn’t read it. At least not without forking out money for a subscription. So, won’t read it. Can’t read it. Don’t need to read it.

    The headline was “Go Delete Yourself from the Internet. Seriously, Here’s How” from the Wall Street Journal.

    And in this day and age of terrible tech advice abounding I’m pretty sure this was not parody. It might have been well-meaning. It might have even been sensible. But it was probably not good advice.

    Today is a day I have marked in my calendar as my “blogiversay” which is twenty-four years to the date of when I made my first blog post on my first blog. I didn’t put it into my calendar until years later when I noticed that the first post in the archives of the blog was, and would for a long time be, April 20, 2001.

    And then one day I deleted myself from the Internet. Seriously.

    There were a lot of good reasons to have done it. I was, what? Twenty-four when I first posted. I had just moved out of a backwards little life in a backwards little city (which you can ready-aim-fire at me for being judgemental but you could easily google the name of said city and you’d be greeted with a lot of right-wing, nationalistic, hyper-religious news-adjacent references that would vouch for my then and current opinion of the place.) I had a lot of growing to do, and I did a lot of said growing right there live on that blog, sixteen years worth. A lot of that blogging, those growing and changing opinions, may not have aged well, and good or bad, I don’t care to read and edit two million words of my blathering personal blog writing for any reason.

    So I deleted myself. I deleted myself when I got a semi-public job. I deleted myself when I started managing people, particularly a few stubborn ones who didn’t like me, and I deleted myself when it started scraping up against the gentle opposition of my peers.

    But here we are in 2025 and there are suddenly and realistically a lot of reasons to undelete oneself from the internet. There are a lot of reasons to hold one’s ground and push back against the very idea of ceding this digital space.

    Mostly? There is a vacuum that will exist in the space where each person deletes themselves from the internet and that vacuum would almost instantly be filled by something else. Something bad.

    Maybe some terrible AI content will slurp into the vacuum.

    Perhaps what people will see will instead just be more terrible influencer content and the tidal wave of stealthy and deceptive advertising.

    Or worst, and what I fear the most, is that the vacuum will be filled by the relentless creeping onslaught of political propaganda and the opinions (agree with me or not) which are increasingly anti-fact, anti-science, anti-intellectual, and anti-reality. I fear the space will just get filled with more lies, more manipulation, and more noise designed to overwhelm and crush what little remains of these fragments of freedom and democracy to which we cling.

    April 20, 2001 was a few months before 9/11, a day which for reasons beyond the obvious changed the trajectory of western civilization. On that day we went from an optimistic society progressing towards something special and we collectively did a u-turn into fear and suspicion and surrendering our rights for the illusion of slightly more safety. Now, arguably, many of those rights have been gone for a generation, nearly twenty-four years gone, and yet we all feel less safe than ever. What are terrible trade. What a terrible decision we all made together.

    Right now, a big part of me feel like that happened so easily because we deleted ourselves from the conversation. Deleted ourselves from reality, from truth, from the fight, from purpose, from everything. We deleted ourself from the internet, a great big town square where we should all be shouting and having a voice, arguing and making better choices for us all. We deleted ourselves and turned over our voices to corporate social media, to algorithms, to AI, to billionaires who claim that they are guardians of that voice but who only put it in chains.

    We deleted ourselves and surrendered.

    I am undeleting myself. This stupid little resurrected blog is the beginning of that effort. I am trying to reclaim my voice, small and unpracticed as it is.

    Undeleted.

    You next. Stay tuned.

  • social games

    I spent nearly a decade feeding the massive social media networks like Facebook and Instagram with my creative output.

    What did it get me?

    I could tell you that I learned some skills in social media engagement, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration because an invisible algorithm did most of the work.

    I could tell you that it gave me an excuse to write and create, but that would be something of a cop out because one shouldn’t need such excuses to practice one’s craft.

    I could tell you that it gave me an audience, but honestly I could have currated an email list of my friends and family and had nearly as many eyes to see what I made.

    What it really did was create value for someone else.

    What the social media networks never admit is that the house is only one guaranteed to win, and it’s always their house. Sure, some folks hit a jackpot and walk out richer and wiser, but most of us spend our creative chips and they vanish into the coffers of the app or network.

    I can’t tell you that you shouldn’t play the social media game, but I can suggest that there are far fewer winners there than there are the rest of us. And I can tell you that I have lately been, and will continue to be, putting more effort into building my own (much smaller and less social) networks with my creative energies.

    I wrote the first half of this post as a professional reflection on social media itself and maybe as a bit of shrouded advice about starting your own blog. But the truth is I’m feeling a little more than bitter about the whole thing. In fact feel more than a bit taken by these systems. Conned. Duped. Played. As have almost all of us.

    I remember participating in the early forum sites. Usenet, in particular, was really pretty much a crude ancestor of Facebook or Reddit: alt.movies.obsessive the joke went. But there was never any pretense that we were doing anything besides chatting with passing strangers, ghosts in the night, words on a screen that we knew were some other person but that person maintained a reputation that was as transient as the dial up connection.

    Obligatory Simpsons reference? Check out Radioactive Man Issue #42 for more explanation, huh?

    What we really did with the social media networks was recreate fame. We invented a way for people to be famous online, and if they were already famous offline to milk that fame even more online. The social networks invented the online celebrity: the influencer, so now rather than clambering to become a tv star or a movie a-lister, anyone with a smartphone, anyone posting anything, anyone participating was really just auditioning for the i-list.

    That was the whole game: the whole point of creating from that moment on was to build a following, become noticed, attract clicks, and generate revenue from it all. The new dream: and we all dreamed that dream because participating was playing was dreaming.

    Even now, you may be reading this going: well, what’s the point then? Why are YOU writing a blog if not to have people read it, if not to create content that persists and, in playing all that, rolls the dice on internet celebrity?

    I don’t know. I don’t know how to break free of that idea other than to do what I have been inclined to do from the beginning: share for the love and zen of sharing, and simply hope that it is enough to exist in a quiet corner of this infinite internet casino avoiding putting any more tokens into the house than needed to keep from getting booted out the door.

  • works of wandering

    As of two o’clock in the afternoon I have logged nearly seventeen thousand steps. Walking. Wandering. Vaguely destinationed towards places where I could sit and write after walking and reading and trying not to trip and fall flat on my face.

    I’ll be the first to admit that I had no real plan about what to write in this blog. Maybe that was on purpose. Maybe. But too, correlating with that lack of a plan came a lack of a name. Anything I have written in the last decade or so has pretty much started with a clever name after which the words on the corresponding topic seemed to flow with clarity and abandon. I had no real plan this time, though, and so when the blogging software asked me to type in, dammit, something, anything, what are you calling this blog, man? I typed in something about “wandering” and off I went to post.

    This struck me as an adequate title, at least to start. Why? Well, obviously because as it stands I seem to be doing a lot of wandering lately. Literally and figuratively. Wandering through life. Wandering through my career. Wandering the trails. Wandering up and down and back and forth and wherever the trail seems to be taking me.

    So that the first few of my posts have been about wandering and walking is, perhaps, no surprise.

    And so that I spent my latest day off walking until my feet hurt was, perhaps, also not much of a surprise.

    This may turn into a blog about wandering after all.

    As of two o’clock then I have wandered at least ten kilometers through the trails and streets and neighbourhoods, and though I have found myself having not gone very far nor accomplishing very much, I have logged some serious wandering steps to that specific nowhere in particular.

    I have been inclined to write for as long as I can remember. I would even suggest that there has never been a conscious moment in my life when I have not felt that my purpose—my raison d’etre as it were—as a sentient human being wandering around with my senses alert and recording was not also part of some grand universal plan to turn those thoughts and observations into words on a page. 

    Sounds like an ego thing.

    If that sounds egotistical, it should not. 

    I usually struggle to find any other equally driving force behind my own existence, as if my fingers are simply the equivalent of whatever constitutes the USB port of the universe and my role is to turn everything I see, think, and hear into data output. It’s a silly idea, but rationally it’s not a terrible thing to have a role that one can articulate—even a role as silly as being a data port on a computer analogy. I wander and I write and then I wander some more and I write some more. Click save…aaaaaand writing to disk.

    So here I am, writing some more.

    Writing about writing. Writing about wandering and then writing about wandering and then writing more about the irreducible loop I find myself in writing such things before I go out and wander and write and wander and write some more.

    I have been trying to write an introduction to this blog. I don’t attempt to do that because I expect some grand audience to dive into these words and make sense of them, or to make sense of me, but rather to try to formalize this role I have taken upon myself: recorder of things, stenographer to the universe, guy with a keyboard and a website. This is important shit, after all. These are big shoes to fill. If I don’t know what I’m doing here, what’s the point. I gotta make sense of it if no one else but for myself.

    As of two o’clock in the afternoon I had logged a helluva lot of wandering steps and typed a few hundreds of words and landed in a cafe where I could sit and channel all that data into a keyboard. And out the metaphorical data port comes this: a purpose and maybe the best explanation that I can muster.  These are works of wandering the world and wherever, opening my eyes to the universe and logging it into yet another website. 

    You want a reason for something or anything at all? I write because it is who I am, and I can’t explain why else.

  • lots to say, and lots of time

    There will be cross-posting, I warn you now.

    Who’s to say what is the right way and what is not? After all, log onto any search engine or social media tool and do a quick query for blogging advice and it all revolves around these vague concepts of user engagement and click-thrus and follower counts and blah-blah-blah…

    So few people are writing about the zen of writing. I even fall into that trap myself sometimes. I just write about what I think other people want to read, rather than writing about what I want to write about.

    I have a laundry list of other sites where I post.

    You may even know about some of them.

    I have a place where I write about art. I write about art when I do art, and then sometimes I don’t do much art at all, or I don’t feel like being all that introspective about my art, so I just don’t write about it.

    I have a blog for my video game. I’m making a video game. Did I mention that yet? Oh, maybe you already know that. I am coding a real-to-goodness video game in real-to-goodness code with art and music and ideas. Oh, the ideas. And I write about that when I hit milestones.

    I have a professional blog. I’m not that good at writing about myself as a professional, though. It is a lot of words about learning to learn and thinking to think and working to be better at working, or something, I don’t even know half the time. I am doing it to try to parse out the bits of my brain that think I might still have something to contribute to a business world. Is that working?

    I want to write more about just stuff. You know. Stuff. About travel and the dog and some book that I read that felt good and oh, did you know I sat on the couch and played this video game for a while and it was fun and mindless and no I didn’t learn any deep and abiding lessons from it, but it was how I spent my day and so I want to write about it?

    This is just a blog.

    I have blogged for half my life now. And that’s almost literally true. I say that because on June 27, 2025 that will be literally true, to the day. Wow.

    So here I am, resurrecting this notion of a random writing blog. And I’m going to write in it. And I’m going to cross-post into and from it. And some days it will be about nothing at all.

    And that’s the zen of it. Warned yet?